Amid all the many lies that George Santos has told, one strange episode has received less attention—his recovery from COVID-19 at the very start of the pandemic, despite a set of serious underlying conditions.
On March 1, 2020, the very first confirmed case of COVID-19 appeared in New York state. On March 30, Santos, who was then running to represent New York’s 3rd congressional district in the House of Representatives, appeared on a local conservative podcast and told the story of his survival after contracting the virus.
“Unfortunately on the 9th of March I became symptomatic with what we all know now very well, COVID-19 a.k.a coronavirus, commonly known as the Chinese flu,” he said, with a wry giggle. “On the 11th I ended up in the hospital. It was really bad, fever, body aches.”
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Santos was in particular danger from COVID-19, he explained, because of other serious health issues.
“I have an immunodeficiency and I have acute chronic bronchitis. I also battled a brain tumor a couple of years ago, and I had radiation done, which really lowers your immunity in general,” he told the podcast hosts. “Radiation isn’t a game. I’m susceptible to cancer. It’s in my DNA.”
Santos said he was taken to Elmhurst Hospital in Queens by ambulance, placed on a gurney on arrival, and spent around five hours in a “plastic bubble” with an “air filter” as the hospital had run out of isolation rooms. He said he was given a chest X-ray, which came back clear. Santos said he was then swabbed for COVID-19, and on March 14 he received a positive result. He said he spent days with a high fever, hallucinating and confused.
On March 24, Santos said he went back to the hospital for a re-test and received a negative result two days later.
“They’re calling me a survivor,” he said. “I don’t know if I really survived anything. It’s just flu.”
Santos went on to underplay the danger of the virus, saying that he did not become dangerously sick or need serious medical interventions despite his underlying conditions.
“I’m just shocked at the proportion this has been blown up to. Because here I am, a perfect candidate-to-be, you know, R.I.P, and it just didn’t happen.”
But there were inconsistencies in Santos’ COVID story, first reported by Washington Post journalist Dan Diamond on his personal blog.
On March 14, 2020, the day that Santos originally said he received his own positive test for coronavirus and was bedridden with fever, his campaign tweeted a press release on the unfolding COVID-19 crisis including a lengthy quote from Santos, and praising then-President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency. The tweet made no mention of Santos’ own illness.
On March 18, 2020, four days after he originally claimed he had received a positive test and was very sick with COVID, Santos appeared on Fox Business, showing no signs of illness. However, during a COVID town hall that Santos hosted in April 2020, he said that he was still symptomatic through March 18.
Santos went on to speculate that he might have contracted the virus at CPAC in February 2020, where at least one attendee was later confirmed to have had coronavirus.
Although Santos never again mentioned having a brain tumor or undergoing radiation, he did go on to retell his COVID survival story many times during his first failed campaign and his second successful bid for the House of Representatives.
But the details, including the severity of his illness and the timeline of the story, began to shift.
In a September 2020 interview with local outlet The Island Now, Santos said Elmhurst Hospital provided him with no treatment other than recommending Advil for his fever.
“I followed those instructions, and I had probably the worst two weeks of my life as an adult,” he told the paper, saying his lungs were functioning at only 70 percent capacity.
He also said his underlying conditions, which he did not detail, meant he could not receive “traditional treatments.”
After President Trump’s own diagnosis of COVID-19 in October 2020, Santos’ experience with the virus became a publicity boon. He appeared on numerous news channels discussing the president’s illness and his own experience.
The timeline of his illness began to change. Appearing on Fox News that same month, Santos said he was a “very early case here in New York, on March 7.”
The date is earlier in March than in Santos’ other accounts—where he said he felt symptoms on March 9. If he was indeed positive for COVID on March 7, the same day then-Governor Andrew Cuomo declared a state of emergency, he would have been among the first 89 people in the state to be infected with the virus, and among the first in the country.
By the following year, Santos’ story was changing again.
On March 5, 2021, Santos posted a tweet saying it was the one-year anniversary of his positive test. This is four days earlier than in his initial version of the story.
He used this anniversary to claim that COVID-19 was a “potential biological weapon that accidentally or intentionally escaped a lab in China” and encouraged followers not to “be enslaved by this virus.”
However, in a series of tweets five months later, Santos said that he was “infected with Covid in February 2020,” was tested at Elmhurst Hospital on March 4, and tested positive for COVID on March 7.
“True story and you can google it,” he wrote on Twitter.
If Santos was indeed infected with COVID on March 4, this makes him part of an even smaller group of early survivors. On that date, there were only 11 known cases of COVID-19 in New York state, mostly linked to a single community in Westchester County.
Santos’ own political position on COVID-19 and the government’s response to it has also flip-flopped over the course of his two campaigns for Congress.
In November 2020, he was an outspoken critic of the developing COVID vaccine, suggesting it might have health side effects. “I’m a HARD pass for the #COVID19Vaccine, Thank you,” he tweeted on Nov. 30, 2020.
Three months later, however, Santos had shifted his position to support President Trump’s Operation Warp Speed—a government initiative designed to accelerate the rollout of the vaccine.
Santos was highly critical of how Democrats, at the federal and state level, handled the public health crisis wrought by COVID-19. He frequently criticized both New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and his successor, Governor Kathy Hochul, slamming New York’s COVID mask mandates and shutdowns for destroying small businesses.
Santos did not respond to The Daily Beast’s request for clarification on the details of his COVID-19 experience, or his claim to have had a brain tumor.
